A court in the town of Grosseto found him guilty of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his passengers in one of the highest-profile shipping disasters in recent years.

However the judges rejected a request that Schettino begin his sentence immediately. They ruled instead that [Schettino] would not go to prison until the appeals process is completed, which can take years. "

"The prosecution rejected the argument of Capt Schettino's lawyers that he had unfairly been made a scapegoat and that the other officers who were on the bridge on the night of the collision should have been tried alongside him.

Mr Pizza continued:

Quote It takes nerve to continue to insist that the fault lies with others.

We ask you, the judges, that he should receive the right punishment, a punishment that will re-establish the truth of what happened to the Concordia."

"The court said Schettino knew people were still aboard the Costa Concordia when he boarded a life boat and abandoned the ship, adding that he did this "to save himself with the precise intention of not getting back on the ship". In the report, judges said the situation when Schettino abandoned the Concordia was such as "to make it impossible or difficult" for the passengers still aboard to "find safety". "The 32 deaths of the people on board the Concordia wouldn't have happened if (Schettino) had managed the emergency with expertise and diligence," the report said, and if he had adhered to "dutiful" regulations for a situation of that kind. During the emergency, Schettino received a call from Italian Coast Guard Commander Gregorio De Falco, who in the aftermath of the disaster was hailed as a "hero" for ordering Schettino to return to the sinking Concordia. In the report, the Grosseto court said that during the conversation, Schettino was "improvising, recounting a movie that was playing only in his imagination," and the judges compared Schettino to an improvisational actor. "Those lies are offensive towards the hundreds of people who were trapped," said the report, adding that they were even more so towards "those who didn't make it".

"The doomed Costa Concordia was carrying a huge shipment of Mafia-owned cocaine when it set off on its final voyage, investigators have said.

’Ndrangheta, the feared Calabrian crime syndicate, had its drugs hidden aboard the huge cruise ship that partially capsized in January 2012 with the loss of 32 lives, phone and tape recordings of gang members have revealed.

“The same ship that made us a laughing stock around the world, took the piss out of us, too,” ’Ndrangheta boss Michele Rossi is heard saying to an associate, Massimo Tiralongo, according to police officers investigating the organisation’s vast cocaine-trafficking operation.

In addition to vessels operated by Costa Cruises, ’Ndrangheta also placed its drugs on ships owned by MSC and Norwegian Cruise Lines, which travel between Europe, North America and the Caribbean, according to details of the criminal investigation revealed in La Repubblica."

"Florence’s appeals court has upheld the 16-year jail term for Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off Italy in 2012 leaving 32 people dead.

Schettino was not in court when the verdict was read out by presiding judge Grazia D’Onofrio. He will not be jailed immediately pending a possible further appeal and it is unlikely he will ever the complete sentence because of Italy’s crammed jails and generous parole system."

The black box from the vessel recorded him saying: "Let's go and do a salute [to Giglio]" in his native Neapolitan dialect.

As the ship approached the shore, he told the helmsman to swing the rudder hard to starboard - "otherwise we go on the rocks".

After the huge ship hit the rocks, Schettino initially gave the order "hard to port", moments later changing his mind and calling out: "Hard to starboard. Close the watertight doors in the engine room."

The chief officer of the engine room told him the level of the water was rising fast. Schettino then asked: "So are we really going down? I don't understand."

"ROME -- The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that crashed into a reef in 2012 and capsized, killing 32 people, was headed to a Rome prison after losing his final appeals bid Friday.

"Livorno port official Gregorio De Falco shot to fame for his orders to Francesco Schettino after the captain abandoned the Costa Concordia, which sank off Italy in 2012 in a disaster that killed 32 people."

"Schettino, dubbed "Captain Coward" by the media for abandoning ship, spent most of the evacuation on a rock as terrified passengers threw themselves off the tilting liner at night after it hit an outcrop off the island of Giglio.

A telephone call transcript later emerged of De Falco demanding the captain return to ship.

When Schettino resists, De Falco warns: "You may have managed to save yourself but there, it will really go badly... I will create a lot of trouble for you. Get on board, for fuck's sake!"

"But do you realise that it is dark and we can't see anything?" Schettino asks, leaving an incredulous De Falco to wonder: "What do you want to do, Schettino? Go home? It is dark so you want to go home?"

The conversation was seen in Italy as an allegory of the country's "two souls"; on one side the "hair-creamed godfather used to breaking the rules", on the other the military hero with rigorous ethics."